He had indeed frequently thought of bequeathing to them at least their liberty; but years had elapsed without his being able to surmount the legal obstacles to their emancipation, and in the mean while his old age was come, and he was about to die.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

Zossimov had agreed at once to desert the drinking party to go to Raskolnikov’s, but he came reluctantly and with the greatest suspicion to see the ladies, mistrusting Razumihin in his exhilarated condition.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. I looked upon the rotting sea, And drew my eyes away; I looked upon the rotting deck, And there the dead men lay.
— from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Tom Tulliver, then, compared with many other British youths of his time who have since had to scramble through life with some fragments of more or less relevant knowledge, and a great deal of strictly relevant ignorance, was not so very unlucky.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Carton was the first to speak: “The last chance is gone: it was not much.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Countless waterfowl rejoiced in the waters.... "... Vipasyi, having thrice circumambulated the lake, seated himself in the N.W. (Váyubona) side of it, and, having repeated several mantras over the root of a lotos, he threw it into the water, exclaiming, 'What time this root shall produce a flower, then, from out of the flower, Swayambhu, the Lord of Agnishtha Bhuvana, shall be revealed in the form of flame; and then shall the lake become a cultivated and populous country.'
— from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis

'Women talk,' said the lama at last, 'but that is a woman's infirmity.
— from Kim by Rudyard Kipling

To speak the language of our own time the system held the place of the “additional curates” or “pastoral aid” societies.
— from The Eve of the Reformation Studies in the Religious Life and Thought of the English people in the Period Preceding the Rejection of the Roman jurisdiction by Henry VIII by Francis Aidan Gasquet

The parents did not forbid her joining the Baptists, but their silence, their lack of sympathy and their manifest disappointment and grief over it made her burden far heavier than if they had openly opposed it.
— from Dorothy Page by Eldridge B. (Eldridge Burwell) Hatcher

Galt, acting with Alexander Gillespie, a prominent London financier who was the agent of the Toronto, Guelph and Sarnia Railway, now proposed to substitute this line as the westward extension.
— from The Railway Builders: A Chronicle of Overland Highways by Oscar D. (Oscar Douglas) Skelton

She had awaked at last out of her slumberous stupor, sorry to see the light and know that it was day again.
— from Diana by Susan Warner

I walked athwartships, under the break of the poop, {95} watching the canvas aloft and at the same time listening to scraps of the conversation.
— from The Voyage of the Arrow to the China Seas. Its Adventures and Perils, Including Its Capture by Sea Vultures from the Countess of Warwick, as Set Down by William Gore, Chief Mate by T. Jenkins (Thornton Jenkins) Hains

Mr. Stackpole looked as if women were to say the least incomprehensible.
— from Queechy, Volume II by Susan Warner

The stone that lieth not in your way need not offend you.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.